When my brother had died, I’d been unable to stop it. But that was then, this was now and I’d get my baby back by any means necessary.
I threw on Hansel’s jacket. The pockets were heavy with mags. Then I untied the frilly mask, put my glasses back on—much better—and took the custom pistol out of the purse.
Hansel gave me a dubious look. I remembered what he’d said earlier, about if we lost the auction, Management couldn’t be seen as lending me aid, because that would cause troubles for him in the world of supernatural villains, or something.
Right. Watch me.
“You’d better get out of here, Hansel,” I said as I did a chamber check.
He nodded. “Good luck.” And then he fled.
The vampire and the necromancer were glaring at each other. The security golems were moving to get between them. Surely the bidders were watching the potential conflict between two powerful supernatural forces to the point Ray was forgotten. Or so I hoped. It was now or never.
Only Brother Death looked back at me. Apparently he could see through the concealing spells just fine; he knew what was coming and, worst of all, seemed amused by it.
And poor little Ray was just sitting there, oblivious, between a bunch of monsters, stuck in the potential crossfire. He was in danger, but better to die human and innocent than to let Susan twist him into something horrible.
Stepping out of that nave was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
“You want the Kumaresh Yar? Here it is!” Then I tossed the fake. It landed between Susan and Lucinda with a thump.
They both looked at it, and since they’d both possessed it before, it was obvious that neither of them was fooled. However, I was hoping that in the heat of the moment every other evil, conniving, power-hungry thing there would go for it.
The church went nuts.
You’ve got to want something pretty bad to get between a vampire and a necromancer, but monsters—humanoid and other—rushed, shambled, or slithered out of their naves.
I punched the gun out in both hands. The Grayguns Sig had a compact optical sight on it, just a window in a box, but on that glass was a glowing red dot, and the instant it was floating over Brother Death’s chest, I pulled the trigger twice.
He took a step back, not from pain or shock, but just a small reaction. He put one big hand to his sternum where there were two holes, glowing green. The look he gave me wasn’t one of pain, but more like he was surprised by my audacity. Then I shot him in the face.
The loud noises hurt Ray’s ears and he began to wail.
Lucinda glanced toward my gunfire and that tiny distraction cost her. Susan launched herself at the necromancer, so fast she was practically a blur. Only something else collided with the vampire to fling her violently away. Susan was sent rolling across the grass, but she popped right back up. Her dress had been shredded by claws.
The thing that had saved Lucinda’s life had come from seemingly out of nowhere, and it appeared to be a jagged, seven-foot-tall clump of pure shadow. So dark that it was almost solid.
“Meet my plus one; he’s one of my father’s finest creations.” Lucinda said. “Now pluck the arms off that vampire bitch so she can know how it feels!”
I’d let those two work it out.
As the other bidders and guests either fought over my rock or went for the exits, I headed straight for Ray. Brother Death had shrugged off a gunshot wound to the head and simply turned his back to walk away.
One of the clay men stepped in my way. He was reaching into his suit, acting just like a regular security guy, probably to draw some sort of weapon from a shoulder holster, but I shifted over and put a round in him.
It turned out they weren’t bulletproof. In fact, the impacts were rather dramatic as the side of his head shattered. The sunglasses went flying. The space where the eyes should’ve been was open; there was nothing there, just a dark hole going into the body, except what seemed like a good ways inside, there was a tiny flame dancing. It gave both the impression of a pupil and a sense of animation.
But then I put another round in his forehead and the whole top of his skull burst into pottery fragments.
Fireflies came out as the body collapsed in a pile of dust.
The church was chaos. It turned out the two Russian dudes were some sort of were creature because they were getting hairy and ripping out of their suits as they claimed the rock, only to get swatted aside by a woman in an evening dress whose skin had just turned to fish scales.
As Susan clashed with the shadow monster, Lucinda began screaming, “Move in! Move in! Julie Shackleford’s inside the church! Get me that bloody artifact now!” She’d brought a radio. That meant this whole place was probably surrounded by cultists.
Then I had to duck because it turned out the clay men did have firearms, and they opened up.
Bullets dug holes in the grass or splattered off of stone. The tentacle monster let out an obscene bellow as it was struck with a stray.
And poor Ray was still in the middle, crying his head off. Every second this went on, he was in danger of getting hit.
I’m not as good with a handgun as my husband is. I’m more a long-range kind of girl. But right then I was so angry and hyperfocused that time seemed to slow down to a crawl, and I was running and gunning like Owen on his best day, because these assholes were standing between me and my son.
I moved to cover and kept shooting as clay men staggered and broke, crumbling to pieces in their fine suits. Some of my bullets passed through and hit some of the fleeing human guests. Serves them right. As soon as my slide locked back empty, I pulled back just as several bullets smashed into the pillar I was hiding behind. I calmly reloaded while they pounded the historical site full of holes. If I lived, my ears were going to be ringing for days. I should’ve put some earplugs in my purse.
Suddenly, there was a sharp pain around my ankle, my foot was yanked out from under me, and I went down hard. I rolled over and found there was a tentacle wrapped around my leg.
A coiled mass of something came shimmering through the other nave. It was the thing Hansel had hit with the snack tray. I had no idea what it was, but I just did a rapid-fire mag dump into its center, fifteen rounds, fast as I could pull the trigger. Then I had to grab another mag out of the coat pocket, only I fumbled my reload because everything had gotten turned around and twisted up. Pocket reloads are stupid. That’s why professionals always use mag pouches. Stupid dress code.
Another tentacle reached for me, but before it got there, there was a scream of, “Protect Cuddle Bunny!” and my little tentacle monster attacked the big tentacle monster. Mr. Trash Bags was tiny, but he was super aggressive. The other bidder had to let go of my leg to try and defend itself.
I sprang back to my feet, went around the pillar, and nearly crashed headfirst into a clay man.
They weren’t quite human. They were just a bit too slow. If this had been a trained gunman, I’d have gotten shot. But instead, I shoved his gun to the side just as he fired, and I jammed my muzzle into his chest, blowing a hole clean through him. I shot him twice more as I pulled away, and then put a controlled pair into the one standing behind him.
I heard that awful, high-pitched voice again as another bidder revealed itself. “Such chaos. I’ll just take that fine, delicious young man off your hands.” Sadly, some of the bidders were more interested in children than in world-conquering artifacts because this thing was heading right for Ray. Fat, greasy, ponderous, it was the same species as Marchand, a bicho-papão. It stretched greedy hands towards Ray, gross belly dragging, voice alternately shrilling and gasping. “Oh yes, mine, mine, mine.”
I couldn’t reach him in time. It had taken a grenade to put a dent in the last one of these I’d met and I didn’t have anything like that. Ray’s eyes had been closed tight because of the gunfire, but he opened them now, saw the horrible, slavering beast coming his way, and screamed harder. He may be an innocent, but there was no mistaking this thing for
anything but pure evil.
“Ray!” I wasn’t going to make it in time.
Then my mother came out of nowhere. “Back off, asshole!” She slammed one hand into the bicho, right through the skin. Its all-too-human face grimaced. Pale blue eyes went very wide. And then he convulsed as she ripped his heart out. It was coal black, pouring out green smoke, and still beating. The bicho fell, convulsing at her feet, and Susan took a bite out of its heart.
Blood ran down her chin as she roared, “Any of you other sons of bitches want to try and take what’s mine?”
Then the shadow monster rose behind her, encircled her in its serrated arms, and lifted her into the air. It didn’t give a damn about Ray, but Lucinda had given it an order which it would follow until it won or was destroyed. If I’d learned anything from fighting the man, Martin Hood’s shadow magic was relentless and dangerous as hell.
The volume of gunfire suddenly went up dramatically with the addition of a few automatic weapons. Clay men twitched and split apart as they got shredded with bullets. For one brief moment, I thought that maybe by some miracle Hunters had arrived, but from the look of the scraggly bastards running into the church blazing away at anything that moved, it was just Lucinda’s cultist backup. But at least Brother Death’s security now had someone to shoot at besides me.
Gun up, I moved toward Ray. I dropped another clay man, stepped through the dust, and then put two into a running cultist. He crashed into the buffet table. One of the guests rushed me with a knife. Man or monster, I couldn’t tell, it just looked like a guy in a tux, so I shot him twice in the chest. He fell and skidded across the grass on his face. Man then.
Almost there.
And then a bullet hit me in the leg.
My knee buckled and I fell. I screamed, more from the frustration than the pain. I rolled on my side, found the cultist who’d shot me, just some punk in jeans and a T-shirt at the far end of the church, and opened up on him. He stumbled back against the stone, and then slid down it, leaving a red smear. I fired the rest of my mag at his buddies, clipping one, and forcing all of them to take cover.
Unfortunately, one of them took cover next to where a Russian had landed, and that unlucky bastard got his face bitten off by what I was pretty sure was a werebear.
Ignoring the agony, I shoved myself back up. My leg wouldn’t support my weight. So while I reloaded again, I hopped along, dragging one foot behind me.
Ray saw me and reached out, like Momma, save me from the scary noise!
“It’s gonna be okay.” I scooped him up with my left arm and held him to my chest, trying to put my body between him and the threats, then I limped for the back. He was warm, heavy, soft, and thrashing around, strong as an ox. This was the real Ray. It was him! It was really him! “I got you.”
The cultists popped out, but I swung my right hand back and fired wildly, trying to force them to keep their heads down. At each loud bang Ray screamed. My poor kid was going to be deaf. So was I, but right then my health didn’t matter.
I was heading for the lamias’ lair, but that was better than going out through the wild gunfight that was consuming the front.
Except I didn’t quite make it.
One of the clay men shot me in the back.
As I fell, I managed to turn my body to protect Ray from the impact. I hit the ground hard and lost my pistol. It was like a red-hot lance had just pierced through my shoulder blade, but all I cared about was making sure he was okay. The poor little guy was terrified, but unharmed. He wasn’t going to stay that way for long though, so I desperately tried to drag myself further.
A pair of high heels stopped right in front of my face. I looked up to see Susan, her arms tinged with dark blood, face dripping supernatural gore. She must have gotten away from the shadow creature.
The face that used to be my mother smiled down at me. “See, sweetheart. That’s why I can’t allow you to keep the little one. You’ve really got no concept of how to keep children safe, do you? You’re going to get him killed with this foolishness.”
She reached for the baby. I reached for my gun. And then something hit me on the back of the head.
The world went black.
CHAPTER 18
“Thou art the worst Guardian ever.”
I was in a grey, foggy place, and the man speaking to me had been dead for years. Unlike the last time I’d seen him, he was in one piece and not having his skin peeled off by a Great Old One. He was a big, muscular man. Like me, he also bore the marks of the Guardian, only he had a lot more of them, covering most of his body, and his kept moving around in a very unnerving way. But they’d done that back when he was alive too.
“Am I dead? I’ve got to go back. Ray needs me.”
“In time,” the last Guardian said.
Then I wasn’t dead? Good. Because if this swirling grey wasteland was heaven, it was a real rip-off. But time was the last thing I had. Last I could remember I’d gotten shot, and Ray was in danger. “Look, my husband’s the one who talks to ghosts. That’s not my thing. Send me back or wake me up or whatever. I’ve got to get him before Susan does. Please.”
“’Tis not my decision.” But the way he was giving me a disapproving scowl, that told me if it had been his decision, he still thought I was wrong.
“Well, screw you then.” I started walking.
I made it through a few hundred feet of fog only to find myself back at the exact same spot, with the Guardian standing there, arms folded and grumpy.
“What is the life of one child, even thine own flesh and blood, when weighed against the fate of the world?”
I wasn’t going to take any shit off a funny-talking, dead Viking conquistador whatever the hell he was. “I never asked to guard the stupid artifact. That was your job.”
“’Twas my duty,” he agreed.
“You volunteered. I didn’t.” Even though the fog was moving, I couldn’t feel any wind. I couldn’t smell anything. I couldn’t feel anything at all. All I could see and hear was a sanctimonious dead guy, and I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture. “I appreciate you saving my life, but I never asked for any of this Guardian stuff. I don’t know how it works, I don’t know who it comes from, and I don’t know what the hell they want from me.”
Some of the fog parted, revealing a still, black-and-white vision of our battle on the pyramid where Koriniha had telekinetically ripped all his skin off, and she’d also stabbed me in the throat. Old Ones were real assholes like that.
“’Twas fate that brought us to that moment, for the passing of the mantle. Dost thou wish to understand the powers granted to thee?”
“If I’m stuck here while my kid’s in danger, can’t you at least talk normal?” But he just kept frowning at me. “Fine. Yes. Tell me how it works then.”
“Thou art nigh unkillable, should thy will be sufficient.”
“Unkillable?” I snorted as I pointed at the three-dimensional fog vision. I don’t know what to call it. This was more Owen’s kind of thing. “Koriniha peeled you like a grape.”
“Nigh unkillable. Old Ones are not to be trifled with. The Others hold no sway over them. The Great Old Ones are treacherous and cunning. Though sometimes they trick the Others to do their will, the factions remain bitter enemies.”
“The Others… That’s one of the groups in this great cosmic war that’s supposedly going on all around us. They’re the ones who created these marks. Who are they? What do they want?”
“The Others are not of this world. They do not wish to conquer it, yet it does not behoove them to let it fall to the likes of the Great Old Ones, or be consumed by the madness of Asag. Thus, they meddle.”
The fog vision changed. Now it was an unfamiliar scene, but it was the same old Guardian, massacring what looked like a bunch of Nazis. From the skulls and SS pins, they deserved the ass-kicking the Guardian was dishing out. I recognized one of them as that psycho Jaeger, though he was still human at the time and not yet a vampire.
“In
times of great peril, when this world may fall, each faction chooses a champion.”
This time the grey vision was a jungle, and a bunch of conquistadors were having a very bad day. It looked like they’d interrupted a human sacrifice. I’d never seen Lord Machado in his mortal form, but I spotted him because of the morion helmet and that terrifying axe, and from the trail of limbs behind him, he’d not appreciated the interruption.
“A vow I made to the spirits of my ancestors, the Others heard. Things of vital importance must be guarded. Only the vigilant are chosen.”
“Since I let Brother Death steal my son, I’ve bombed in the vigilance department.”
I realized that the last man standing against Lord Machado was the Guardian, only it looked like he was still human at the time. But then it swirled into another vision, of an even older battle ground and another Guardian fighting some menace, and then another, and another… They began to flash by, faster and faster, a parade of black-marked strangers, fighting clear back to the beginning of time.
“Thus it is. Thus it has been. Thus it must be until the final battle, the end of time, when even death may die.”
“That’s a lot of poor suckers all drafted to protect one evil artifact,” I muttered.
“Nay. ’Tis not always that cursed device. That which is guarded varies. The Others provide the mantle. The Guardian decides how best to use it.”
“Hold on. I get to pick what I’m supposed to protect?”
If anything, that annoyed him even more because he knew exactly what I was thinking. “Choose wisely what thou wilt guard, flippant wretch, for each use brings great peril. The more thou vows to protect, the faster thy humanity will be consumed.”
That’s right. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. “What’s the cost?”
“A coarsening. The stripping of all that is good and kind. With each new line, thou wilt become less human, more weapon, until the forfeit of thy very soul.”
Monster Hunter Guardian Page 24
